Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Leaving Iraq Is Not Enough
Like many of her Democratic colleagues, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is calling for a timetable to exit Iraq. That is not enough. The longer we stay, the more Americans will be killed and the greater will be the burden on the American taxpayer and the U.S. military. As we have seen recently, with the recall of former Marines to active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military is stretched too thin. Were the U.S. to face a genuine crisis, not the made-up one of Iran, we would not have the resources needed to deal with it adequately. The sooner the U.S. leaves Iraq, the more secure the American public will be from an attack on American soil. The only purpose in staying in Iraq is to postpone admitting that we have lost the war. How many of our soldiers have to die before we inevitably face the truth?
Even if we were to pull out before the end of this year, our departure would not be enough. Feinstein and others have argued that we must keep troops in the area, in Kuwait and elsewhere. The Bush administration still has not given up on the idea of maintaining military bases in Iraq indefinitely. Leaving our soldiers in the area is asking for trouble. As long as our troops are stationed in Muslim countries, we will be subject to assault. In Lebanon in 1983, 241 U.S. servicemen died when Hezbollah staged a suicide bombing. Even though our Marines were in Somalia in the early '90s to bring humanitarian supplies to the people, they were waylaid and forced out. In 1996, Osama bin Laden called for Muslims to drive the Americans out of the holy lands of Saudi Arabia. His express purpose for 9/11 was to force our retreat from the land of Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.
Although it is especially important to remove our forces from Muslim countries, it would be advantageous to bring them home from other overseas bases as well. Why do we need troops in Germany? The Cold War is over. Why do we need troops in Japan? Is it to intimidate the Chinese or the North Koreans? In Okinawa, among other places, the local population strongly objects to the presence of our military, which also breeds resentment in neighboring countries, many of whom feel threatened.
Terrorists have not attacked Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, or many other nations that have no military presence in the Muslim world. The fable that Muslims are attacking us because they don't like our democracy or our freedoms implies that they should also be bombing Stockholm and Geneva, which are less protected and easier to attack than New York City or London. Clearly those cities and nations have little to fear from al-Qaeda.
This does not mean that the U.S. should become an isolationist state. Isolationism was originally embodied in the U.S. rejection of the League of Nations. Pulling back our troops to our own land would not preclude our participation in such international bodies as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Moreover, with the budget savings that a less aggressive foreign policy would make possible, we could provide greater help to poor countries and those suffering from AIDS or natural catastrophes. Having a smaller military budget would strengthen our economy, already the globe's strongest, while giving us a great deal of influence in the world. In fact, posing no threat to other nations would likely increase our sway over them.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency for powerful countries to want to exercise their power. As we all know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, Britain became the world's major power and created a huge empire. The U.S. today has close to absolute power. As a result, the temptation is compelling to impose our will on others, always in the name of freedom or democracy. Historical precedents abound. As Stephen Kinzer outlined in Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, the U.S., starting in the last decades of the 19th century, began to exert its power over weaker countries. The U.S. has also built much of its empire without direct rule: we just put "our sons-of-bitches" in power.
Regrettably, many people feel a patriotic urge to "fly the flag" around the world. Resisting the temptation to interfere militarily in other countries would be difficult. Can it be done? From an optimist's point of view it seems likely that, if the U.S. scaled back its military to a level that would allow us simply to defend our shores, this nation might become the "city upon a hill." We could even wind up with more influence than we can achieve through military might. We would certainly have a more peaceful globe.
Understanding Why Iraq Is a Disaster
Several Democrats and even some Republicans have attributed the disaster in Iraq to the way in which the war was fought. There have been calls for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Certainly the Pentagon in fighting this war has made serious errors. From the beginning, when looting broke out, the military had no plans to bring order to the country. In fact, Rumsfeld and other high Defense Department officials had no plans for what to do after the conquest of the country. The dismissal of the Iraqi army has also been blamed for the outbreak of chaos and violence. Many observers, including some who were strong supporters of the invasion, have attributed the inability to stamp out the insurgency to an insufficient number of troops. Rumsfeld, who has been actively pushing a lean military dependent on high-tech weapons rather than boots on the ground, has resisted calls for more soldiers. Without doubt, lack of planning and errors in judgment have contributed to the growing insurgency.
Many military experts have attributed the growth and strength of the violence to the failure to employ valid counterinsurgency tactics. Little effort was made, they argue, to win the minds and hearts of local inhabitants. Shooting first and asking questions later may be the safest tactic in the short run, but it builds hatred and anger as innocent women and children are killed or maimed. Whether it would have been possible to win over the public is open to debate. The coalition forces did not occupy the Kurdish north, and the Kurds have remained largely supportive of the Americans. Some of the Shias who had suffered from Saddam Hussein's reign did initially welcome the toppling of his regime. To this day, a number of them still support the coalition forces. The British contingent, concentrated in the southern part of Iraq, which is primarily Shia, have bragged that they have been able to patrol without helmets and have had a good relationship with the local people. Unfortunately, this benign occupation has become more violent; no longer is the south peaceful. The level of violence, however, is still less than that in the Sunni areas. Whether the relative success in the south is attributable to better efforts at winning the hearts and minds of the population or whether it is that the local people gained greatly by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime is again open to argument. The answer is probably both; but, as we are seeing, violence is increasing in Shia areas as well, and leading figures from that sect are calling for resisting the occupation.
In the sections of the country that are primarily Sunni, violence has been unrelenting. The Sunnis have been strongly opposed to the occupation and the toppling of their leader, Saddam. No matter how hard the military tried, the chances that American troops could have won the hearts and minds of many Sunnis seem remote.
Another school of thought claims that Iraqis are not ready for democracy. There is nothing in their history to suggest the willingness to compromise and allow others to exercise limited powers that characterizes a democracy. Most countries with multiple ethnic, religious, or tribal groups have difficulty managing a democratic government. Typically, one of the groups will seize power and put down the others. Switzerland is one of the few multi-ethnic societies that work and it does so by relegating most powers to the various cantons; the central government handles mainly foreign affairs and defense. Iraq is made up of various groups, but the largest is the Shias, who have been dominated by the Sunnis in the past. Thus the tensions and simmering conflicts make a working democracy very improbable. Only a federal state whose central government had weak powers would have much chance of being viable.
Blaming the chaos in Iraq on a failure of planning or on a failure to use the correct tactics is similar to the effort by some Marxists to blame the fall of communism in the Soviet Union on a failure to practice communism correctly. It never addresses the root issue: the war could not be won, because it was a colossal mistake.
While all the factors listed above make the occupation more difficult, they ignore the basic problem: that is, a foreign power occupies Iraq. Not only is it foreign, but it is from a predominantly Christian country, and Iraqis are almost all Muslims. Many Muslims, if not most, see the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a modern version of the Crusades. While to most Westerners, especially Americans, the Crusades are simply an episode in ancient history with no relevance to today, most Arabs feel quite differently. They see the foundation of Israel as an effort by the West to retake the Holy Land of Palestine using the Jewish state as a proxy. The Muslims see the Jews expanding from their original mandate to occupy more and more of Palestine. The recent invasion of Lebanon confirms their perception of the advance of Christianity/Judaism into the Middle East.
Some evangelical Christians adhere to the view that Jewish occupation of greater Palestine will lead to the Second Coming, in which those who do not accept Christ, Jews and Muslims alike, will be damned to eternal Hell. These fundamentalists therefore support Israel's expanding settlements in the West Bank. Muslims point to those American religious groups as proof that the U.S. invaded Iraq to subjugate Muslims who oppose the Jewish state and its efforts to occupy the Holy Land.
For most Americans, products of the largely secular West, it is hard to understand the depth of feeling that the occupation of an Arab/Muslim country generates among the inhabitants. The history of the British experience in Iraq indicates that holding that country would be a bloody and violent enterprise. When the British put Iraq together at the end of World War I, they experienced a growing insurgency, which ultimately forced them to withdraw. The U.S. is simply following in their steps with the same result – violence directed against the occupier. Sooner or later, we will have to follow the British example and pull out. Later means more deaths and more violence. The sooner we get out of this disaster, the better.
Bush 0-for-3 With 'Axis of Evil'
With the testing of a nuclear device in North Korea, the foreign policy of the Bush administration, whose major aim was to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, has descended into complete failure. In his 2002 "axis of evil" speech, the president identified three countries as "evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Never mind that these countries had nothing in common, except that Bush and his team disliked them. True, Iraq was a dirty dictatorship, but it was a secular country that had made war on Iran, with our encouragement and support, for nearly a decade. Iran was a theocracy with an elected president that had at one time been friendly to the United States. After we overthrew their elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, during the Eisenhower administration, many Iranians came to view America as the Great Satan. Iraq had attacked it in the 1980s, so Iran was hostile to that member of the axis of evil. North Korea was and is a communist dictatorship with no connection to either of the other "evildoers."
The readers of Antiwar.com know well that Bush's Iraq policy has produced a disaster from which we cannot extricate ourselves except at huge cost to the Iraqis, to Iraq's neighbors, and, at a minimum, to the reputation of the United States. Increasingly even Republicans are recognizing that "staying the course," as Bush puts it, is not a viable option and that a new policy is desperately needed. It seems likely that, before the next presidential election in 2008, political pressure will be so great that most if not all of our troops will be out of that country.
Our Iran policy has had the effect of pushing that country toward building nuclear weapons. The people of Iran resist being lectured to by anyone, especially the "Great Satan." Our unwillingness to sit down and talk directly with the representatives of that country can only be characterized as stupid and shortsighted. Jim Baker, chief of staff and later secretary of the treasury under President Reagan, then secretary of state under Bush I, recently said, "It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies." The current Bush administration has refused to participate in talks with Iran until they agree to suspend nuclear enrichment. From the Iranian point of view, agreeing to suspend enrichment means giving away its only bargaining chip.
Actually, the Iranians have international law on their side. According to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), countries have the right to build nuclear facilities and enrich uranium for nuclear power plants. Thus the Iranian public, even those who dislike the current leaders, supports the effort to develop the technology and the facilities for nuclear power. Threats to sanction their country only build support for the government and its projected course of action. Moreover, many Iranians believe that the Bush administration would like to engineer a regime change and might invade as they did in Iraq. Thus a nuclear bomb would be a deterrent against attack by either the United States or Israel. They note that the U.S. is not threatening to attack North Korea, which claims to have nuclear bombs, while the U.S. administration has made it clear that they are not taking military power off the table as far as Iran is concerned. As a consequence, our foreign policy has created an impasse. The Iranians continue their efforts to build nuclear weapons while we sputter empty threats.
The administration's North Korean policy has led to a third grave crisis. The North Koreans have tested a nuclear weapon, albeit a small one, thus demonstrating to the world that they have joined the nuclear club. When the administration took office in 2001, they inherited an ongoing relationship with Pyongyang; but their general policy was to disown and ignore everything that the Clinton White House had done. One of their first steps was to undermine the Agreed Framework that the Clinton administration negotiated with North Korea. Bush not only included that country in the axis of evil but was quoted as saying "I loathe Kim Jong-il. … I've got a visceral reaction to this guy, because he's starving his people."
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to freeze and dismantle its plutonium weapons program and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear facilities. In return, it was to receive international aid: two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel oil to supply its power plants until the reactors were built. The U.S. promised to move toward full recognition and normal political and economic relations; it would also give formal assurances that it would not use nuclear weapons against North Korea. The U.S. never lived up to its bargain to establish normal relations, nor did it promise not to use such bombs. Moreover, the Japanese and South Koreans were slow in building the light-water reactors.
The White House has been claiming that the Agreed Framework was a failure. Actually, it worked well. The IAEA inspected North Korea's nuclear facilities regularly, and the plutonium was kept under lock and key. Near the end of the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the "Dear Leader" in Pyongyang, and there was talk of a visit by President Clinton.
Despite these promising steps, in October 2002 the administration claimed that the North Koreans were cheating and had a covert program to enrich uranium. Although the administration claimed the Koreans had admitted to it, the charge that they were enriching uranium has never been proved. Even if North Korea were attempting to enrich uranium, such a step would not have violated the Agreed Framework or the Nuclear NPT. As a consequence of the U.S. claim, the president halted oil shipments, which had been part of the 1994 agreement. Shortly thereafter, Pyongyang reactivated its nuclear facility and announced that it was withdrawing from the NPT.
Since then, Kim Jong-Il's government has been pushing for one-on-one talks with the United States. Bush has refused, insisting on six-party talks (U.S., Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, and North Korea). In June of 2003, North Korea announced its intention to acquire nuclear weapons to offset the "hostile policy" of the United States. After the U.S. imposed strict and effective financial sanctions on North Korea, ostensibly because it was alleged to be counterfeiting dollars, Pyongyang refused to attend the six-party talks. However, the North Korean government has offered to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for international aid and a non-aggression pledge from the U.S.
The Bush administration's foreign policy is to punish those states whose policies it finds objectionable. The White House resists anything that looks as if it might reward "bad behavior." This approach results in raising the ire of those countries subject to our punishments. In the case of North Korea, it has pushed that country into defying the world. Further sanctions are likely to result not in better behavior but in more obstreperousness. The only way to move toward a non-nuclear Korean peninsula is to talk to Pyongyang, one-on-one. Hiding behind the six-party talks will not result in peace.
Consider the results of the Bush administration's foreign policy. In six years, they have inducted one member of the "axis of evil" into the nuclear arms club, pushed a second into following the same path, and created chaos, civil war, and a quagmire in the third – the one non-nuclear-oriented state in the bunch, Condi Rice's visions of mushroom clouds notwithstanding.
Permanent Bases: A Recipe for Permanent Terrorism
| May 25, 2007 |
| Permanent Bases: A Recipe for Permanent Terrorism |
| by Thomas Gale Moore |
| While the White House has often denied having a Plan B for Iraq, it turns out that the Pentagon has thought about what to do if Plan A, the "surge" doesn’t work. According to Steve Inskeep and Guy Raz of National Public Radio, plan B would involve maintaining a series of military bases around Iraq with some 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops. That plan would have them stay for decades, under the excuse that they could train the Iraqi troops and deter neighboring countries, such as Iran and Turkey, from sending their own troops into the country. Already the U.S. has built military compounds that look permanent, supplied with air-conditioning, movie theatres, Starbucks coffee houses, and fast food outlets. The idea is hardly new. For the last decade, the neocons have advocated that the U.S. establish bases in Iraq to police the Middle East and make the area safe for Israel. Although no one is totally certain why the Bush Administration took us into the quagmire of Iraq, it seems plausible that securing bases in that part of the world was one significant factor. At the time, the U.S. had major military installations in Saudi Arabia; but they had generated considerable opposition among the Saudis and in the rest of the Arab world, with the result that the Royal family was increasingly desirous of getting rid of them. In 1998, Osama Bin Laden issued a Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans, ostensibly because American troops were now stationed on "sacred" soil, the land that contains Mecca and Medina. In the latest Republican debate, Ron Paul raised that issue, only to be widely criticized by the Republican right. Paul, however, was correct: that was a major factor in 9/11. The U.S. strong bias favoring Israel no doubt contributed as well. The twin towers were not brought down, however, because we attempted to provide equal rights for people of all genders or that we wear immodest clothing and live "immoral" lives. They were destroyed because of our foreign policy, in particular, because we had troops in Muslim parts of the world. We now have even more of them and are seen as a new version of the Crusades. This implies that, if we maintain a strong military presence in Muslim countries, including Iraq, we will continue to generate hatred and terrorism. Osama and his allies will persist in attacking us. Permanent or long term bases in Iraq will only bring more fire and brimstone to the world. The only way to reduce terrorism significantly is to leave the Middle East to the Middle Easterners. Why are we building the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad? Iraq is a relatively small, unimportant, and backward country sitting on a lot of oil. That the U.S is constructing this mammoth compound tells the world that it is planning to occupy that part of the globe for a long time. Iraq will become an unofficial colony used to police the rest of the Middle East. In particular, the U.S. will be watching over Persia or, as it is now called, Iran. The Persians have a long and great history and will not relish the idea that a western Christian newcomer will be supervising their behavior. Nor will the Sunni governments in the region look with favor on this "crusading" state’s attempting to dictate their actions. The only way to prevent another 9/11 is to vacate the Middle East. We have no need to be there. Some would argue that our dependence on foreign oil requires that we control the largest supply of petroleum in the world. This is untrue; there is no necessity for America to rule the oil-rich territories. Countries with large supplies of oil have no use for that fuel except to sell it. All of those oil-based states have become dependent on the revenues that come from selling it. They have no choice. Nothing can be done with that liquid except market it. Even if radical Islamists take control of one of the petro-states, its government will still have to sell the oil to generate the revenue necessary to maintain its power. Unfortunately, none of the presidential candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, understands this. Even those strongly opposed to the war, such as Congressman John Murtha, advocate "repositioning" our troops, a mantra that keeps being repeated. In some cases the politicians seem to be talking about moving the troops to self-contained bases in Iraq or in Kurdistan. In other cases "reposition" means moving the troops over the horizon to the Persian Gulf. If the idea, however, is to secure peace and stop terrorist attacks on the U.S., keeping our troops in the Middle East will fail. It will only generate more terrorism. We must pull our soldiers back to the United States and stop trying to police the world. |
The Curse of Power
We have all heard Lord Acton's admonition, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Most of us believed this referred only to absolute rulers, but its scope is much more widespread. Today the U.S. is the only superpower; as such it has almost absolute power. It can go anywhere, wipe out any state, conquer any army, and ruin any economy with economic sanctions. As such it sees itself as the existential authority, the chosen state, the "city on a hill" that can bring democracy, freedom, and virtue to the world, if necessary through the barrel of a gun.
While the neocons have emphasized the use of power to bring enlightenment to the world, especially the Middle East, the U.S. has a long history of bearing the "White Man's Burden," of conquering foreign territories, either to bring Christianity to Roman Catholic Filipinos, to annex pagan Hawaii, to install friendly governments in Central America or to rid Cuba of the colonial rule of Spain by installing our benevolent governance. Manifest destiny, a staple of our social studies courses in grade school, led us to remove the uncivilized and pesky "redskins" to fulfill our goal of a coast-to-coast empire.
Between the First World War and the Second, the United States, despite its isolationist foreign policy, never hesitated to send our military abroad. From 1912 to 1933 American marines controlled Nicaragua; Haiti was occupied from 1915 to 1934; from the time of the Spanish-American war until Castro assumed control, the U.S. played a major role in Cuba. Under a U.S. budget bill of 1901, the Platt Amendment reserved the right to intervene in Cuban political, economic and military affairs; it also secured the permanent right to Guantánamo Bay as an American military base.When our leaders today talk about the necessity of maintaining a strong force in Mesopotamia to "pacify" the area, they are following a long tradition.
With the exception of Latin America where, under the Monroe Doctrine, America has imposed its will for at least a century, the U.S. used to be looked up to around much of the world. Currently, as we have extended our reach to their neighborhoods, we are hated in most states. The U.S. military has bases in about 130 countries and on all continents except Antarctica, where we have three "research" stations. Why were we attacked on September 11, 2001? Having stationed our troops in Saudi Arabia, not far from Mecca, enraged the Muslim world. Or as the CIA would say, it was "blowback."
President George W. Bush claimed that al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. because its followers hated our freedoms and our democracy. If so, why have the terrorists never attacked Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, or Norway? Except for the incident in 2001 when the French foiled an attack on the U.S. Embassy, that country has been free of terrorism since 1995. Those countries follow democratic practices and provide freedom for their people, yet they remain untouched by Islamic extremists. Certainly they have as dissolute and erotic societies as the U.S. Terrorists have ignored them because they are not making a military presence felt in the Muslim world.
Except for the attack on the American Embassy, the French have escaped any Islamic violence by staying out of the Middle East and, especially, out of the Iraq conflict. At least in part because of their long traditions of neutrality, Switzerland and Sweden have refrained from sending troops to the Middle East. Neither Canada nor Norway supported the U.S. in this invasion — although their recent participation in the NATO effort in Afghanistan may make them subject to an Islamic attack in the future.
Why did terrorists attack London and Madrid? Britain suffered several terrorist strikes from native Muslims offended by its participation in Iraq. Spain was subject to the bombing of its trains by Islamic fanatics because it too had soldiers helping the Americans in Iraq. Those spared terrorism had no troops on Muslim soil, nor were they following policies hostile towards Arabs.
The first instinct of people when attacked is to retaliate. The natural reaction after September 11 was to go after the perpetrators. Turning the other cheek by withdrawing our forces from abroad is very difficult, if not politically impossible. Many people believe that, since we have the power, we should use it to go after those who brought down the World Trade Center. None of the serious candidates for president argues for bringing all our troops home. In fact, no one is suggesting removing our troops from the Middle East. Repositioning is the furthest that the any one of the candidates will go. Although it may be right and proper to argue that we should remove our troops from foreign soils and adopt a "Fortress America" stance, given the temptation of nearly absolute power this policy would require self-restraint greater than the body politic permits.
If, as seems likely, the U.S. continues to maintain a military presence in that part of the world, it will provide ample targets for Islamic groups to attack and will also provide an irresistible incentive to bring chaos and terror to our shores. Democracy is swell but it does not permit policies that appear to be weak. "We must not cut and run" say the politicians and many voters. Our strength traps us into an "in your face" policy. Assuming that a Democrat wins the 2008 presidential election, will he or she fly in the face of charges of cowardice and weakness to pull our troops out of Iraq and, ultimately, from Afghanistan? I fear not. How long must we spill our blood and treasure in this quagmire? It has already gone on far too long and cost too many lives.
The Curse of Oil
The Bush Administration has made much of Iraq's oil reserves. It wants to use the proceeds from the sale of petroleum to pay off the country's debts, cover the costs of reconstruction and government expenses. It has been hectoring European governments and the Russian government to write off much of the debt that Iraq owes them so that the money can be spent on rebuilding that devastated country. In general, most people and governments have viewed Iraqi oil as a boon; but its existence has major downsides. Oil is more of a curse than a benefit.
First is the quandary it creates for possession of the oil fields. Kirkuk is surrounded by the northern oil fields, which represent about 40 percent of all oil in Iraq. The city of Kirkuk includes Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, and Assyrian Christians. Except for the Christians, each group claims to be the largest. During Saddam Hussein's regime, Arabs were encouraged to migrate to the region and occupy farms and houses. In many cases Kurds were forced out of their properties, which were turned over to the newcomers. Now the shoe is on the other foot and Kurds are returning to the region and demanding their property. In many cases they are forcing the Arabs out of homes they have occupied for many years. The Kurds would like to make Kirkuk their capital or at least part of the territory they control. The Arabs want Kirkuk to be part of Iraq, run by the central government. Turkey has a strong interest in protecting the well-being of the Turkmens. In any case, whoever possesses Kirkuk will have control over much of Iraqi oil. This is a recipe for civil war.
Although most observers are aware of the problems of Kirkuk and its oil riches, there are two other major dilemmas that have received little attention in the media or, apparently, in the policy-making community. Together these undercut the possibility of establishing a working democracy. Economists call one of these the "Dutch Disease," after the difficulties that country faced with the discovery and development of large natural gas reserves. The export of oil or natural gas in large quantities leads everywhere to an appreciation in the value of the local currency. That in turn means that all imports, such as agricultural products, consumer goods, and manufactures, all become cheaper and drive the local producers out of business. The country therefore becomes increasingly dependent on the export of the oil or natural gas, the revenues of which usually go in large measures to the government.
Another dilemma arises immediately; the government collecting these large sums has less need to tax its people. It is taxation, however, that leads to representative government. Remember the motto during the American Revolution, "No taxation without representation." English and French history demonstrates this clearly. The kings in England had to go to Parliament to raise the sums they needed. In France, the kings had other sources of money and so avoided calling the Etats-Généraux together. The result was the development of democracy in England and an autocratic government in France.
With large oil revenues, which make farming and manufacturing unprofitable, much of the labor force looks to the government, either for handouts or for jobs. Saudi Arabia is a clear example. The revenues from oil in that Kingdom have enabled the government to provide free medical care, free education, and cheap fuels, while employing foreign workers to do the dirty work. Since the Saudi Government has no need for tax revenue from its citizens, it simply attempts to buy the approval of the public. It offers neither freedom nor democracy but bread and circuses. On the other hand, a government that must raise its revenue from its people is limited in attempting to obtain support through state largess. Offering benefits to one group requires taxing others to pay the bill, thus restricting government's power to buy support.
Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves in the world, is a classic example of these problems. Saddam Hussein bought support by paying his police and Republican Guards well to keep his people in line and by subsidizing gasoline to build support. In Baghdad gasoline currently sells for about 5 cents a gallon at the pump. The government buys refined gasoline from Kuwait at world prices and then subsidizes its sale to local consumers. (This leads to a few individuals buying gas cheap and smuggling it out of the country.) Even Paul Bremer, the dictator of Iraq during the occupation, felt he could not raise the local price of gasoline to world levels. Nor could he privatized the oil fields which would have reduced the government's earnings from oil and thereby made it more difficult to operate without taxes.
Iraqi dates, which were once well known around the world, have suffered from the "Dutch" disease and are no longer exported. With an inflated Iraqi currency, they have become too expensive to sell in world markets. As Iraqi oil sales have resumed, the new Iraqi currency has strengthened making imports cheaper and exports more difficult.
Assuming that a democratic government emerges in Iraq – an extremely unlikely event, especially in light of the Kirkuk problem – those running for office will want to use the oil revenues to buy support. Cheap fuel for autos will continue. Government employment will be provided for much of the population. Since only through the government will a person be able to get ahead, controlling it will become paramount, thus making a democratic system unlikely to last long. The dependence on imports results in a small private sector confined mainly to retailing. Democracy, however, requires that there be a thriving private sector. For one thing, those politicians who fail at the ballot box must have some reasonable alternative way to earn a living. It also requires that government be dependent on revenues raised through taxes on the people in the private sector. Otherwise the government can enslave its people by simply buying the loyalty of the police and military.
It is not coincidental that the only Moslem country with a working democracy is Turkey, which has no oil. Malaysia is also semi-democratic and "suffers" from not being mineral-rich. Norway, which has large oil fields, was a democracy before oil was discovered and has banked the oil income for a future when the fields become dry. The government has effectively sterilized the revenues, preventing the destruction of local industry and the tendency to bribe the public through government programs.
What can be done about Iraq and its oil? Is it condemned to autocracy? Perhaps not, given some thought. To begin with, reducing the size of Iraq's debt makes the problems worse, not better. If, for example, servicing the debt took all of the oil revenues, then there would be no effect on the exchange rate and local industry could flourish. Moreover, the government would have no money left and would have to resort to taxation. As a consequence in order to have something to tax, it would have to foster local businesses. If it had to tax, it would face pressure to get permission from taxpayers – hence democracy.
If the debt is reduced or if it takes less than the entire earnings from oil, securing conditions for a democracy would require that the excess revenues be sterilized or spent by the government on imports that were not competitive with local products. It would require that gasoline prices be increased slowly to world levels. As the government did this, it could rebate the higher revenues to the poorest of the public. How to prevent a government that is initially democratic from offering bribes to its people through government jobs and handouts, thus making a return to autocratic government likely, will take much thought and planning. It may be an insoluble problem, but this administration and the next should devote time and energy into trying to find a solution.
'Disarming Iraq': Lack of Evidence
| April 11, 2004 DISARMING IRAQ, by Hans Blix. 285 pp. New York: Pantheon Books. $24.
At several points in ''Disarming Iraq,'' Hans Blix admits that he too assumed Saddam Hussein's regime was concealing weapons of mass destruction. But, he explains, ''I needed evidence.'' His frustration with the Bush administration, expressed throughout this book, was that it was both supremely confident that the weapons existed and utterly uninterested in evidence. Indeed, the administration was deeply mistrustful of Blix's search for it. Washington's logic, he writes, appeared similar to that of witch hunting in the Middle Ages. ''The witches exist; you are appointed to deal with these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witch hunt.'' Blix was puzzled that this certainty about the weapons was combined with absolutely no real information about where they might be. He repeatedly complained to senior American officials that the intelligence was meager or simply bad. The sites they directed him to rarely yielded anything. The evidence Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited publicly Blix knew to be dubious. And yet Blix also believed that the witches existed. He suspected that the Iraqis were hiding weapons and weapons programs. He came to this conclusion on the basis of the same logic -- a lack of evidence. In 1991 the United Nations had found vast stockpiles of chemical and biological agents in the country. Iraq claimed to have destroyed them but had never presented a single piece of evidence that it had done so. If they had destroyed them, Blix wondered, why did they not ''try to convince us of this in 2002 and 2003. . . . Had there really been no written orders issued in 1991? . . . Why was the Iraqi side so late in presenting . . . lists of people who they claimed had taken part in the destruction of prohibited items in 1991? Why did they not present these people for interviews in December 2002?'' Thus in his first report to the Security Council, in January 2003, Blix declared, ''Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance -- not even today -- of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world.'' ''Disarming Iraq'' can be read as an attempt by an honorable international civil servant to steer between two realities: on the one hand, an American administration that had made up its mind to go to war no matter what; on the other, an Iraqi regime that never cooperated enough to ease the world's suspicions. Blix writes in a straightforward, honest style, with his distinctive, low-key (dare one say Swedish?) personality coming through. He is never outraged, often ''surprised,'' ''puzzled'' or ''troubled.'' His book is a detailed history of the diplomacy surrounding what turned out to be the last United Nations inspections in Iraq. It's an important addition to the historical record, though it contains more about Unmovic than most readers will want to know. (That's United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission.) Blix provides few interesting character sketches and says little that is surprising about the Bush administration. He speaks admiringly of Colin Powell, feels that he was always treated courteously by Condoleezza Rice and writes less charitably of Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. He recalls a meeting with Cheney at which the vice president tried to intimidate him, threatening to ''discredit inspections in favor of disarmament'' if he did not produce quick results. More revealing are Blix's difficulties with the Iraqis. Time and again he and his colleague Mohamed ElBaradei tried to explain to the Iraqis that they needed to cooperate for the inspections to confirm what they claimed -- that they had no weapons of mass destruction. After repeated requests to talk to Saddam Hussein, which were turned down, Blix and ElBaradei met with the Iraqi vice president (a powerless Hussein stooge). At that meeting, ElBaradei sternly explained that it was ''incomprehensible'' that Iraq had not taken the steps the United Nations had demanded. There was no response. Later, in February 2003, as the United States made clear that time was running out, several countries proposed ways of testing Iraqi cooperation. One was that Saddam Hussein give a televised speech promising full cooperation with inspections so that everyone in the country heard it from the top. Another was a timeline for inspections with clear benchmarks. Almost every country got seriously interested in these proposals. But there was no response from Iraq. It was behavior like this that led Blix and many others to assume that the Iraqis were not coming clean because they had something to hide. Blix is unsparing of the United States in his concluding sections. He points out that virtually every claim made by American policy makers about Iraq's weapons programs -- aluminum tubes, yellowcake, mobile labs -- has proved to be false. The entire assessment of Iraq's weapons program, he argues, lacked any kind of ''critical thinking.'' In addition ''the contempt which both Vice President Cheney and the leadership in the U.S. Department of Defense appear to have held for international inspections deprived them, in effect, of a valuable source of information.'' Everyone recognizes the need for human intelligence in societies like Saddam Hussein's. Well, the inspectors, who met with Iraqi officials, traveled around the country and inspected sites, were human intelligence. Iraq was a hard case. Not only was it one of the most closed states in the world. It had a history of pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and had used them twice, against the Kurds and the Iranians. From the mid-1970's through the early 90's, Iraq continuously, persistently and ambitiously sought nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. All Western intelligence services underestimated the extent of these efforts. International agencies, chiefly the International Atomic Energy Agency, headed by Hans Blix, actually gave Iraq a clean bill of health during these decades. As a result, everyone, including Blix, was wary of Iraq's declarations that it had destroyed its old stockpiles and wasn't building new ones. But something changed around the early 90's inside Iraq. Perhaps the regime became dysfunctional, or the inspections worked, or the bombing and sanctions took their toll or something else. But at that point, Iraq appears to have quietly thrown in the towel. Blix speculates that the Iraqis did not reveal this to the world for several reasons: the Americans seemed dead set against them anyway; national pride; they wanted to scare their neighbors (''like someone who puts up a sign warning BEWARE OF DOG without having a dog''). Whatever it was, the United States -- and most of the world -- missed it. But if getting Iraq right was tough, getting the diplomacy right was much easier. Reading this book one is struck by how, at the end, the United States had become uninterested in diplomacy, viewing it as an obstacle. It seems clear that with a little effort Washington could have worked through international structures and institutions to achieve its goals in Iraq. Blix and ElBaradei were proving to be tough, honest taskmasters. Every country -- yes, even France -- was coming around to the view that the inspections needed to go on for only another month or two, that benchmarks could have been established, and if the Iraqis failed these tests the Security Council would authorize war. But in a fashion that is almost reminiscent of World War I, the Pentagon's military timetables drove American diplomacy. The weather had become more important than international legitimacy. Had Washington made more of a commitment to diplomacy, Saddam Hussein would probably still have been deposed. Blix's book provides ample evidence that the Iraqis would most likely not have met the tests required of them. But the war would have been authorized by the Security Council, had greater international support and involved much more burden sharing. Countries like India and Pakistan, with tens of thousands of troops to provide, made it clear that they needed a United Nations mandate to go into Iraq. The Europeans and Japanese (who now pay for at least as much of the reconstruction of Afghanistan as the United States does) would similarly have been more generous in Iraq than they are today. Most important, the rebuilding of Iraq would be seen not as an American imperial effort but as an international project, much like those in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and even Afghanistan. America is paying a price in credibility for its mishandling of Iraq. But the real price is being paid by the Iraqi people, whose occupation has been far more lonely and troubled than it needed to be. Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International and the author of ''The Future of Freedom.''
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